Development of IoT-Based System for Monitoring Electrical Energy Consumption of the Smart and Rental Houses in Tanzania

Abstract

Electricity has a significant impact on human productivity when using a variety of electrical appliances in households. Appliances hooked into the electric network are now causing an increase in electric energy usage in rental homes hence the increases in the user's electricity expenses. Some tenants consume high electrical energy compared to others due to the electrical meters cannot determine the amount of usage by each tenant in the house,  all tenants contribute the same universal payment which is not realistic. To offset these costs, a monitoring system for electric energy consumption based on each appliance in a household is formulated, allowing customers to see how much money and energy they are wasting. Different studies have thus far proposed monitoring electric energy consumption in households. However, most of the solutions did not consider the electric energy consumption of individual appliances which is a main problem for the end-users. This paper presents an Internet of Things-based system to provide information to the users through an application on their daily consumption usage updates whether they are online with the presence of a Wi-Fi module. The system has a backup battery to allow giving information in case the power supply is off. Moreover, our system is designed to monitor the real-time energy consumption of individual appliances.  Our results show that 90% of end-users that observed the implemented system are capable of monitoring daily electrical consumption hence tenants can put a good budget on their purchase of electrical units.